Caliban – Opinion and Righteous Anger

I’m writing this in the train on the way down to London from Manchester. As I type, terraced houses clad in the English flag denote their occupants’ allegiance to the national team in the upcoming World Cup.

Here are some notes I scribbled down when I got back to the hotel last night after Brendan’s gig in Manchester.

Brendan Perry + Guests turned out to be + Ghosts: there was no support band this evening.

The Deaf Institute is a quirky, but very appealing venue. It did actually once serve as an institute for the deaf, but you could have been forgiven for thinking that someone had a wry sense of humour when they picked the monicker.

The venue positively oozes kitsch character with its burgundy patterned wallpaper and stepped, football terrace seating at the back. If you scoured England in search of another place just like it, I doubt you’d find one.

There’s a very inviting, though very warm downstairs bar with lots of couch seating and an excellent bar menu. I can attest to the quality of the bangers and mash, as well as the sticky toffee pudding.

This is the best kind of one-stop shopping: food, drink and a Brendan Perry concert; all in one place.

The sound tonight was excellent. The small, ceiling-mounted PA was adequate for the tiny upstairs room in which Brendan was performing.

The turnout for the gig was low, about 100 people, which I can no longer really say surprises me. It was a good crowd, though, enthusiastically applauding after the songs and, just as importantly, remaining silent during them.

There were a couple of technical hitches during the first half of the show. Brendan’s guitar wasn’t switched on for the start of The Arcane and Rachel’s bass buzzed, fizzed and eventually dropped out for most of A Passage In Time. A dodgy lead was found to be the problem and Peter Sheridan doubled as a roadie during the song to fix it.

The only set-list surprise this evening was that Dream Letter wasn’t played. Peter told me afterwards that it was felt that the set might flow better without it.

As in Galway, Severance was tacked onto the end of the first encore, making it the one and only of the evening.

I recorded the gig and hope to have it up on DIME late Friday evening or Saturday afternoon at the latest. The quality is superb. I’m listening to it now on the train.

Let’s hope tonight’s gig at London’s Union Chapel is as good as Manchester was.

Brendan Perry has finally scheduled a gig vaguely close to our home, 35 km from here, to be precise.

It’s at the Summer Darkness festival in Utrecht on 13th August, a date that will require some planning to meet, given that it’s in the middle of the school summer holiday.

The concert will be in the Domkerk, a church that should provide a paradoxically fitting atmosphere for Perry’s existential musings.

The festival organisers have taken the unusual, but very welcome step of issuing single performance tickets for his show. Usually, you’d require a day ticket or a whole festival ticket to attend, but it’s now possible to pay for and see only Brendan’s gig, which is a terrific concession to his fans. I wonder if the artist had anything to do with this arrangement. If so, it could mean that no other gigs are planned for this country, so it’s a case of seizing the opportunity now, for there may not be another.

This was the third and final gig that Brendan would be playing in Ireland to promote his new album, Ark. It was to be arguably the best of the three.

The Róisín Dubh is a traditional Irish pub with a music venue in a second room at the back, on the canal side. Like the city in which it’s located, it has plenty of character and this boded well for the gig ahead.

When I arrived, the band were still doing the soundcheck. Even from the other room, I could tell that the sound was going to be good tonight.

Rónán Ó Snodaigh, one-time Dead Can Dance performer and founding member of Kila, was filling the support slot again, as in Dublin. He took to the stage at about 21:15 and performed an improvised set, playing the bodhrán and singing.

Before the gig, he told me that he doesn’t decide what he’s going to play until it’s time to play it and, as he prepared to play, he dropped a beer mat in front of himself, bearing a set list that he had quickly scribbed together at the bar. Class.

The man is a born entertainer and his performance, steeped in humorous banter, brought a smile to everyone’s face. He more than warmed up the crowd for Brendan, who was only a few minutes behind and arrived on stage at 22:00.

I’d estimate that here were about 150 to 200 people present; a similar showing to Cork, anyway. As I looked around, I saw a number of people who looked as if they were at the wrong gig, including a contingent of young, scantily clad Polish women. No-one could get in without a ticket, though, so they must have come to the right place.

The set list was the same as on the previous two nights. The only difference was that Brendan didn’t take any chances with Severance and opted to play it as the last song of the first (and thus only) encore. In Dublin and Cork, the audience had failed to respond with the appropriate enthusiasm after the first encore and, in the latter city, it had cost them Severance.

Ironically, Galway was the one place where the audience did clap and cheer for more, but it was in vain, because the full set had already been played.

The crowd in Galway were very enthusiastic, compensating for their diminutive number with rapturous applause and cheering. A few people even danced during the second half of the set, which was as amusing as it was unexpected.

Spirit was once again the high point of the evening for me. It really grooved along and it was all I could do to stop myself from dancing (which wouldn’t have done the recording any favours). Just feel that pounding rhythm in the section where Peter Sheridan kicks in with the tambourine.

This brought my three day stint in Ireland, following the band, to a close. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and am left craving more.

If you are thinking of going to see Brendan at one of his upcoming shows, I strongly suggest that you give in to the temptation. You’ll be in for a real treat. Beg, borrow or steal to make it happen.

As in Cork, the sound in Galway was excellent, much better than in Dublin. Brendan has a fine sound engineer in the person of David Badrick.

I recorded the concert and it is now available on DIME.

I’d like to say a huge thank you to Brendan for his liberal, generous and enlightened attitude regarding fan recordings. Your generosity towards your fans is much appreciated.

This was the second of Brendan’s three gigs in Ireland and a big improvement on Dublin, the night before.

There was no support act this evening, so the doors didn’t open until 21:00. Happily, the Pavilion has a downstairs bar, so there was a good place to sit, drink and chat before the gig.

Brendan was still doing the soundcheck when I got there at 19:30. I could hear the muffled strains of Wintersun emanating through the walls of the venue into the alley outside.

The big man came downstairs at about 20:30 and invited me and another fan to sit with him at his table outside. We talked a little about the previous night’s Dublin gig.

Graham Wood, sleeve designer of Ark, was also there, so I got to hear a little about his involvement in the project. He mentioned that the retail version of Ark will have different sleeve artwork to the tour edition.

At 21:15, it was time for Brendan to get ready for the gig and for me to find a suitable vantage point for viewing and recording the gig.

The Pavilion is a very nice venue. It’s quite small, but not nearly as small as Dublin’s Crawdaddy. On the other hand, it was more than half-empty this evening. I’d estimate that there were no more than 150 to 200 people there; perhaps even fewer.

The venue has a raised perimeter that is home to high tables and bar stools. Down on the dance floor, there are yet more tables and chairs, again at the edges.

Amazingly, this meant that when Brendan and co. took to the stage at 21:45, there was no-one standing anywhere near the stage. People were sitting at the various tables, sipping drinks, or standing at the back of the dance floor, a good 15 to 20 metres away.

Usually, one must jockey for position at the front of a gig, but tonight, no-one wanted to be anywhere near the stage. Hardly anyone even wanted to stand up. Bizarre.

The sound was much, much better than in Dublin. The audience were appreciative and respectful, but not effusive. You could have heard a pin drop between songs. In fact, if you put on headphones whilst listening to the recording, you can probably hear my heartbeat: that’s how quiet it was.

I sat on the far right, along the raised edge, on a bar stool about two metres back from the hanging PA. Ideally, I would have stepped back another couple of metres to be in the direct firing line of the PA, but there was furniture in the way.

It turns out to have made very little difference. The quality of the recording rivals and arguably surpasses that of the Brussels gig I captured back in March.

Brendan’s guitar shines through particularly well on this recording. A Passage In Time has never sounded better and just listen to the ending of The Arcane.

Although we were treated to a complete rendition of Voyage Of Bran this evening, we lost Severance from the set.

Once again, the audience fell silent as the band exited the stage after Spirit. There was no clapping, cheering or stamping of feet. It was like a library in there.

Why do Irish audiences not expect and/or desire more than one encore? I really don’t know.

Anyway, this time Brendan wasn’t giving away any gifts. Encores are the earned reward of an enthusiastic audience and, despite their warm appreciation of the main set, they were decidedly lacklustre in demanding the band’s return to play yet another song. If you don’t ask, you don’t get; and we didn’t ask, so we didn’t get.

Within a few minutes of the lights coming back on, the place started to fill up with people considerably younger than me. The venue was performing double duty that evening, once for Brendan and now as the host of the Chic afterparty. Scantily clad twenty-something women invaded the space and rammed painfully home just how long it’s been since I was a twenty-something man.

Brendan emerged from the shadows after a while and we had a chat. He was happy with the gig, but lamented that the audience hadn’t been bigger. He also remarked how strange it is that Irish audiences don’t seem to care about getting more than one encore.

The highlight of tonight’s concert for me was Spirit. Brendan seemed to put a lot of emotion into the performance and the sound was perfect. The bass and keyboards really made the song pound along and it was a great moment to finish on.

Musically, the band were also in better form than the night before. In fact, the only thing wrong with tonight’s show was that it wasn’t completely sold out and packed to the gills.

Plane, train, car or boat, get yourself to one of this man’s upcoming gigs.

I recorded the concert and it is now available on DIME.